Consensus Under Fuzziness (international Series In Intelligent Technologies)
by Janusz Kacprzyk /
2012 / English / PDF
24.2 MB Download
We live, unfortunately, in turbulent and difficult times plagued by
various political, economic, and social problems, as well as by
natural disasters worldwide. Systems become more and more
complicated, and this concerns all levels, exemplified first by
global political alliances, groups of countries, regions, etc., and
secondly, by multinational (global) corporations and companies of
all sizes. These same concerns affect all social groups. This all
makes decision processes very complicated. In virtually all
decision processes in these complicated systems, there are various
actors (decision makers) who represent individual subjects
(persons, countries, companies, etc.) and their respective interest
groups. To reach a meaningful (good) decision, opinions of all such
actors must be taken into account or a given decision may be
rejected and not implemented. Ideally, a decision would be made
after a consensus between the parties involved had been attained.
So, consensus is a very desirable situation. In most real-world
cases there is considerable uncertainty concerning all aspects of
the decision making process. Moreover, opinions, goals,
constraints, etc. are usually imprecisely known. This makes the
decision making process difficult as one cannot employ conventional
"hard" tools.
We live, unfortunately, in turbulent and difficult times plagued by
various political, economic, and social problems, as well as by
natural disasters worldwide. Systems become more and more
complicated, and this concerns all levels, exemplified first by
global political alliances, groups of countries, regions, etc., and
secondly, by multinational (global) corporations and companies of
all sizes. These same concerns affect all social groups. This all
makes decision processes very complicated. In virtually all
decision processes in these complicated systems, there are various
actors (decision makers) who represent individual subjects
(persons, countries, companies, etc.) and their respective interest
groups. To reach a meaningful (good) decision, opinions of all such
actors must be taken into account or a given decision may be
rejected and not implemented. Ideally, a decision would be made
after a consensus between the parties involved had been attained.
So, consensus is a very desirable situation. In most real-world
cases there is considerable uncertainty concerning all aspects of
the decision making process. Moreover, opinions, goals,
constraints, etc. are usually imprecisely known. This makes the
decision making process difficult as one cannot employ conventional
"hard" tools.